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He Asked. They Told.

SEEN/NOT SEEN Portraits of gay men and lesbians in the armed services, faces hidden, were taken by Jeff Sheng for his book, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”Credit
Courtesy of Jeff Sheng and Kaycee Olsen Gallery

Los Angeles

AFTER he posted the first seven pictures on his Web site, Jeff Sheng could not sleep.

“I kept getting up and checking my e-mail,” he said. “I was expecting to hear from someone in the military. What if they demanded information from me? Some of the people I photographed have been serving for 20 years. They could lose their pensions.”

Mr. Sheng, a photographer, had finished the first phase of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a series of portraits of gay men and lesbians serving in the military, all of them in uniform and with their faces obscured in some way — by a hand, a door frame or by darkness. Some subjects turn their backs to the camera. In one image an airman who takes the pseudonym Jess sits on a hotel bed leaning forward. One elbow rests on his knee, his hand cupping his face to shield it from the camera. The portrait is pervaded by a sense of loneliness and isolation.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a self-published book (dadtbook.com; $24.95), had grown out of Mr. Sheng’s earlier project, “Fearless,” which featured large, glossy portraits of young athletes who are openly gay, bisexual or transgender. Since 2006, “Fearless” has toured more than 40 colleges and high schools in the United States and last month was shown at Pride House, a space created at the Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia, for gay athletes to relax with family and friends.

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INSPIRED BY HISTORY Jeff Sheng in his studio near Culver City, Calif. “I merge a fight for social equality with photography,” he said.Credit
Stephanie Diani for The New York Times

“Fearless,” in turn, had grown out of the experience the photographer had playing tennis in high school.

Mr. Sheng is a handsome, slim, 29-year-old who favors jeans and fresh button-down cotton shirts and somehow always looks as if he just got out of the shower. The son of Taiwanese immigrants, he was raised in Thousand Oaks, a suburb of Los Angeles. He was bright and coordinated — student class president, president of the California Association of Student Councils and a good tennis player.

But he found he could never fully relax in the world of competitive sports. “There’s a lot of homophobia,” he said. “I was not comfortable being out.”

At Harvard, Mr. Sheng left tennis behind and discovered a new preoccupation: he picked up a camera and found he loved the solitary hours spent in the darkroom. “It was a refuge for me,” he said during a recent interview in his roomy studio, nestled behind a flooring factory on an industrial stretch just east of Culver City.

Mr. Sheng was a freshman in 1998 when Matthew Shepard was killed in Wyoming. Shaken, he wanted to go to a campus memorial service, but he did not for fear of breaking down in public.

His idea for “Fearless” was to “photograph people I looked up to, people who had done something significant that had been impossible for me to do,” he said. That series now includes 110 athletes from the United States and Canada, almost all stare frankly into the camera. Mr. Sheng explained his choice: “Sometimes when you get stared at, your only choice is to stare back.”

In early 2008, when “Fearless” began getting attention in the press, Mr. Sheng received his first e-mail message from a service member saying he had been moved by the photos. More e-mail messages came, about 10 in all, before the photographer realized he had found his next project. He began traveling the country to interview and shoot military personnel, either in their bedrooms or in hotel rooms near their bases. At first he paid his travel expenses himself; later, he was helped by a grant from the Paul and Daisy Soros Foundation. (Mr. Sheng also teaches full time at the University of California, Santa Barbara.)

Where the “Fearless” photos were bright and glossy (they were shot on film), the new works are muted and shadow-filled. For “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Mr. Sheng used a digital camera, which allowed him to show his subjects their pictures right away — and so, he said, helped to build trust.

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Credit
Courtesy of Jeff Sheng and Kaycee Olsen Gallery

Mr. Sheng has photographed 40 servicemen and servicewomen so far and plans to shoot 20 more. His “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” show, featuring around 30 photos, will open at the Kaycee Olsen Gallery in Culver City in September. Mr. Sheng is at work on a second volume of the book.

He described his subjects, identified only by first names that are pseudonyms, as people who “didn’t want to risk their careers, but who wanted to take some kind of stand.” Earnest and passionate about his work, Mr. Sheng said he struggles to avoid being heavy-handed as an artist. “I merge a fight for social equality with photography, but I’m always trying to figure out how to do it intelligently,” he said.

Mr. Sheng recalled his first interview with Matt, one of his military subjects. “I asked him if he had seen anyone die,” Mr. Sheng said, his face filling with color. “I knew he was a medic who served two tours in Iraq.” In his last tour, Matt told Mr. Sheng, his truck was hit by an improvised explosive device. Matt was injured and his two closest friends were killed.

Reached by phone in Texas, Matt, 24, said he has decided not to re-enlist. He said he was disturbed by the situation of a friend who was discharged after being spotted dancing with another man in a nightclub.

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Credit
Courtesy of Jeff Sheng and Kaycee Olsen Gallery

“Once you are deployed,” he said, “you live with people in an intimate way. You trust them with your life and they become brothers and sisters. I couldn’t help thinking that if something happened to me, no one would know who I was. That is not the way I want to leave this world.”

Matt said he was “blown away” when he saw his photo in Mr. Sheng’s book. “I became very emotional,” he said. In the book, Mr. Sheng reproduces one of Matt’s e-mail messages in which he writes, “After all I had been through ... in one instant I could go from War Hero to The gay soldier that was discharged. How could this be right?”

The airman known as Jess is perhaps the project’s most visible figure. It was his image that landed on the book cover and in Time magazine in February.

“I love the photo,” he said over the phone a few days ago. “It’s great but it’s also revealing. If you knew me, you would know it’s me in that photo. I didn’t realize that my photo was going to be that out there. I did worry that something might happen, but nothing did. I’m proud I did it. I think it shows to conservative Americans that gay military is just normal.”

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Credit
Courtesy of Jeff Sheng and Kaycee Olsen Gallery

After serving in Afghanistan, Jess was moved from what he called a “more liberal” unit to one where he was “pushed back in the closet.” He finds his situation difficult. “You can’t get to know people,” he said. “You can’t develop bonds with the people you’re fighting with day in and day out. I can’t talk about myself. I’m afraid I’ll reveal something. I’m constantly on guard.”

Mr. Sheng recently met and photographed an ROTC cadet who was planning on becoming a doctor. After three years of training, she was ready to deploy. When she read her honor oath, which states that “a cadet will not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those who do,” the young woman decided she must tell her commanding officer the truth about herself. That commander immediately pressed for her discharge. “Now,” said Mr. Sheng, “she may have to find a way to pay back the $80,000 spent on her education.”

For “Fearless,” Mr. Sheng had considered making a film but eventually figured he had made the right choice for the project. “People are not going to see a 90-minute documentary about gay athletes or about DADT unless they already agree with its premise,” he said. “But people can happen upon a picture. Some pictures — like the ones of civil rights protestors being attacked by dogs — sum up what’s really at stake. People who don’t even mean to see it end up seeing it. And then things change.”

The policy known as “don’t ask, don’t tell” — the DADT he refers to — has been in place since 1993. Last month Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for an end to it, saying, “I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”

And this week, Gen. David Petraeus, head of the Central Command, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying he believed that “the time has come to consider a change to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” adding, “but I think it should be done in a thoughtful and deliberative matter.”

For his part, Mr. Sheng said he believes things will change. “Straight or gay, my generation sees homophobia as being openly racist,” he said.